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java.net Spotlight

The SwingLabs project describes itself as "a Sun Microsystems supported project that allows experimentation with extensions to existing Swing components, new Swing components, and other desktop related technologies such as Java2D, AWT, etc. It acts as a testbed for ideas related to client side techologies. Successful experiments will be considered for inclusion into future vesions of the JDK." As well as being the parent to the prominent JDesktop Integration Components (JDIC) and JDesktop Network Components (JDNC) projects, SwingLabs has a number of smaller, focused projects, like the latest version of the SwingWorker for thread-safe long-running Swing tasks.

Want to contribute to the JDK but don't quite know where to begin? The JDK Community Starter Bug List collects bugs identified by JDK engineers as well-suited for outside contributors to fix. These bugs were chosen for being useful, easy to fix, low impact, and not already on Sun's to-do list for Mustang. A getting started page suggests how you can claim a bug, collaborate with others, and contribute a fix.

There's just a week and a half to go for the JavaOne 2006 Call for Papers, which closes on November 30. The CFP page offers guidance in what attendees want -- specifically "talks that deepen their practical knowledge" -- speaker selection criteria, and policies that proposals need to adhere to. Potential JavaOne attendees can voice their opinion on what kinds of sessions they'd like to see on the java.net Planning JavaOne 2006 Forum.

The OpenSymphony project OSWorkflow offers an extremely flexible workflow system that can be plugged into existing applications, whether or not they're OpenSymphony-based. OSWorkflow differs from other workflow offerings by working at a lower, more flexible level. For example, OSWorkflow does not mandate a specific GUI tool (in fact, the recommended approach is to create workflows "by hand" in XML). The project's philosophy is that quick plug-and-play workflow frameworks are typically not sufficient to satisfy enterprise requirements, so OSWorkflow offers a more developer-oriented, "hands on" approach.

The recently-launched Sun Grid Developer Community offers tools and resources for the development of standards, infrastructure, architecture and partnerships for the Sun Grid pay-as-you-go service. Many resources are available on the community wiki, and the community's project space offer a place to collaborate on projects that run on or are interfaces to Sun Grid, or help with development of grid applications. You can also join the Pilot Project and get 100 free hours of CPU time on the grid.

The Publicize Your Project page has been updated with more complete information about communicating with the java.net community. This page, always available under the "Get Involved" heading in the left nav, shows you how you can submit information for the various sections of the front page -- projects & communities, feature articles, spotlights, news, etc. -- and how to use other tools to get the word out, such as participating in forums or using your project's web space to host tutorials, newsletters, or whatever else you need.

The xhtmlrenderer project, better known as "Flying Saucer", offers an XHTML renderer with extensive CSS support, completely written in Java. The most recent release offers better support for float and clear, absolute positioning, absolute units like inches and centimeters, percentage width and height values, image browsing, directory listing, and more. A Java Web Start browser demo is available, showing off many of these new features.

AJAX is quickly gaining steam as a client-side technology for web applications, but who wants to write all that JavaScript and test it across browsers? "DWR (Direct Web Remoting) is easy Ajax for Java. It makes it simple to call Java code directly from Javascript. It gets rid of almost all the boiler plate code between the web browser and your Java code." Featured in the recent article Developing AJAX Applications the Easy Way, it frees you from JSF and Struts drudgeries, leaving "just you, DWR, Java, HTML and Javascript."

The javaserverfaces project hosts Sun's implementation of the Java Server Faces standard (JSR 127). This technology allows for speedy development of web applications by combining reusable UI elements in a web page and connecting these to data sources and event handlers. The project offers not only nighly and weekly builds and the latest source, but also sample code that is highlighted in two recent Sun Developer Network articles: Creating and Using a Custom Render Kit and Unified Expression Language.

The AtLeap project describes itself as "a multilingual free Java CMS (Content Management System) with full-text search engine. Blandware AtLeap is a framework which allows you to rapidly start your own Web application." The servlet-based system handles multi-lingual content and offers many search and customization options. Project owner Andrey Grebnev also notes in his blog that AtLeap won second place in the J2EE division of a recent Sun-sponsored Java programming contest.

The Logger project offers java.net project owners access to the Apache log files for their projects. The service works by adding specially-named users as observers to your project. For example, adding weekly_logger will cause a weekly log file to be sent to the project owner. You can also receive stats reports that provide a simple HTML overview of which files are being accessed, as seen in this example.

"We believe that computers are tools that can help people - in our case, we want computers to help translators. Anything that can be done to help translators improve the quality of their work, or reduce the amount of time it takes to do translation is definitely within the scope of this project." This is the philosophy of the Open Language Tools project, which offers an XLIFF translation editor and a number of XLIFF file filters to handle working with documentation file formats (HTML, JSP, OpenOffice.org, etc.) and software formats (Java properties and ResourceBundles, among others).

The Cajo project offers "a small, free library, enabling powerful dynamic multi-machine cooperation, both within, and between, Java applications." The framework makes no syntactic distinction between local and remote objects, and thus requires no code changes to distribute processing across the network. Applications can transfer their user interface to any Java-capable client. The project claims "This architecture can fulfill the true promise of Java: Turn the network into one seamless, evolving computer; link everything, from mainframes, to mobile phones." Cajo is also featured in the links of the Wikipedia article on Computer cluster.

A sub-project of the JAXB RI project, the JAXB RI Architecture Document Project provides "a high-level map for developers who are interested in looking at / playing with the JAXB RI source code." This view is like " a map of the source code, which helps you understand the big picture and which part of the code you need to dive in to fix the problem at hand. This has been somewhat lacking in the JAXB RI for quite some time." Kohsuke Kawaguchi's weblog entry Pumping up javadoc discusses the custom taglets that allow the design documents and diagrams to stay up-to-date with the code.

The Quartz project, part of the OpenSymphony collection of Java Enterprise components, offers a full-featured job scheduling system that can be integrated into a wide variety of J2SE and J2EE applications, regardless of size. Quartz allows you to schedule tens of thousands of tasks, and its advanced features include clustering and participation in container-managed transactions. Quartz is used by thousands of developers, driving both commercial applications and open-source projects.

The Mobiicents project offers the first open-source certified implementation of JAIN SLEE 1.0, which "brings to telecom application developers what J2EE brings to Web and Enterprise application developers." JAIN SLEE allows popular building blocks such as SIP to be plugged into a framework as resource adapters. It also enables the composition of Service Building Blocks (SBB's) for call control, billing, administration and more. Mobicents is also applicable to problem domains requiring high volume, low latency signalling, including financial trading and online gaming.

The recently launched JavaTools Projects Directory.
seeks to provide an easy way to discover the tools that belong to the Java Tools Community, providing the ability to search for tools by description keywords or related topics. Tools are also classified under various categories depending on status, topic, etc., and include a link through which you can check the RSS feeds of projects directly with your browser or other RSS client.

If you saw James Gosling's keynote and "toy show" at JavaOne (or if you read his blog about it), then you might be interested in trying out "Matisse", the new form designer for NetBeans. If so, check out Project Matisse - Java GUI easy & good looking "by default", which describes Matisse's goals and its integration into the latest NetBeans source. The article also describes what you'll need to use Matisse today: since it isn't yet in a production build, you'll have to check out and build the latest NetBeans source, then activate Matisse with a command-line switch.

The newest java.net community, the Robotics Community, made its debut at JavaOne, with robotics being the subject of two technical sessions at the conference. The community currently features two projects: Sumo robots, as seen at various conferences, and the incubated JRobotics project, which includes preliminary code for a robotics library and simulator, with more in the works.

Developers who want greater access to the ongoing development of Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) are invited to check out the GlassFish project, which describes itself as "a window and entry point into Sun's development process." Community members will be able to view source code, offer improvements, and join in technical discussions. The first available module is Webtier, the next generation application server which uses grizzly, an HTTP listener implemented in Java NIO. Access to more modules is in the works.

As part of the java.net Community Corner at JavaOne, there will be a slide show on the plasma screens in that part of the pavilion. Members are invited to submit pictures of groups of developers, screenshots of projects, pictures of community leaders, and anything else that would help show the breadth of the java.net community. To submit, log into your java.net account, go to the Documentss & Files section of the the 2005 JavaOne slide show folder and click "suggest a file."

Many people use spreadsheets the way they'd use a database, and the xlSQL Excel JDBC Driver embraces this approach by offering a JDBC driver that allows Excel documents to be read and written with SQL as if they were tables in a database. Utilities included with the latest release allow you to export filesystem data to Excel, and to export Excel to XML or SQL script format. xlSQL also comes with a zero-admin MySQL Server which runs out of the zip.

The professional organizations that participate in java.net are represented in the java.net Partner Network, which exists to recognize their contributions and offer further opportunities for collaboration. Organizations that are already involved in projects on java.net development are invited to check out the available levels of partnership opportunities.

Exchange ideas with other java.net members at our Community Corner at this year's JavaOne. The Community Corner is where project members can meet their community leaders, and where projects can show off what they're doing in 20-minute "mini-talks". Daniel Brookshier has more information in his weblog entry JavaOne Community Corner. If you're interested in presenting a mini-talk, reserve a time on the wiki page.

With Project Looking Glass offering a 3D enhanced desktop experience, developers can contribute demo apps to show off what's possible in the "LG3D" environment. The LG 3D Demo Apps project compiles completed demos, while a number of ongoing efforts are in the LG3D Incubator. Looking Glass applications under development include games, media players, mail readers and more.

"Simple and Fun" describes the approach of JRPG Maker, a role-playing game toolkit meant "to test concepts related to MMORPG and Java 2D graphics performance." The project offers a demo game that can be launched with Java Web Start, and is working on RPG-builder tools such as adventure and conversation scripting and map creation. The project is also working to incorporate networking so that many players can adventure together.